The stage which looks unimposing enough seems to invite innovative set design with a sense of
spaciousness that belies the size of the playing area. For a reinvention of The SeaGull
(see link at end) the stage was transformed into a beach scene. For a moving examination of a
family faced with a fault line in their bare-bones life style, (Good Will), the stage
metamorphosed into a farm
with a surprising sense of the wide open spaces. And now, in the funny and sad Stray
Cats, we
have a dark street scene criss-crossed by nine seemingly alike men -- which brings me to the
prime reason I rushed to see the very first performance of this collage play with music: The
creator of its live film-noire universe, Warren Leight. That's Leight as in author of Side
Man,
one of the happiest David-among-the-Goliaths stories of this season. (See link to review of
its original Off-Broadway production).

What you'll find is nine guys in identical trench coats and hats on a stage furnished with nothing
but a few columns,
some with ladders. The mood is eerie and somber, and yet there's something funny about the
Phillip Marlowe-Sam Spade trench coated characters. Not a word is spoken, yet we
chuckle. And when they all throw open their coats, we don't need an announcer to tell us that
a real person with a unique story lives inside each look-alike outer layer.

So that's the premise. Each shadowy "cat" steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight
to reveal himself as more than just another trenchcoat. The surface link, the outfits; the
overriding connection, what the author calls their out-of-sorts and out-of-luck souls, is expressed
as
much by the haunting improvisational sound of Darcy Hepner's saxophone as the individual
narrations.

zmot all of these fragmentary slices of life's
uncoupled strays are successful. However, enough work well enough to make for an
enjoyable theatrical experience. Those who have
seen Side Man, will recognize the sharp dialogue and blend of sadness and humor that
gave
that play the legs to travel to Broadway. (The last monologue is, in fact, very much a
case of Side Man in the making).

Tom Bloom as a Los Angeles insider, (an agent, what else?!), is hilariously self-destructive in his
determination not to let the various girls he meets use him as a step up the Hollywood ladder. He
plays hard to get, dangles his connections before them, gets them into bed where he treats them
roughly and makes it a point never to spend the night. His game plan works well enough, so
well, in fact, that it isn't just the girls who are left dangling.

Another highly amusing game player is the poet whose poems "are read and discussed from
Portugal to Spain" and who shares the secrets of his success with the other "cats" who in this
instance form an
applauding audience of would-be poet celebrities. Alexander Robert Scott's portrayal of this
literati-skewering "Poemwriter" is right on the mark. He seamlessly interlaces his advice with
complaints about the price of success -- for example, having to read "doggerel from Bryn
Mawr students who accuse you of sexual harassment after taking you out for cappuccino."

In "It's Showtime Jocko!" Keith Reddin, proves himself to be as incisively funny an actor as he
is a playwright. (See links to Reddin's plays we've reviewed and admired). Stephen Bradbury,
a recent standout in Amazing Grace, is terrific as "Ol' Gator" a
weatherman giving his "Last Hurrah" after he has been politically incorrect once too often.

The most fully realized and successful episode is Diary of a Voyeur. Ean Sheehy captures the
agonies of all writers in his portrait of a screen writer hooked on the real life events
played out in the apartment facing
his. Besides feeding his writer's block, the dysfunctional
romance to which he becomes an obsessive witness also stirs echoes of his
own recently ended affair.

Probably by the time you see Stray Cats some of the weaker episodes will have been
tightened and the too dark stage brightened. But don't wait too long for the kinks to be ironed
out since these Cats will be back in the alley in less than two weeks.

As usual for plays at
Theatre Three, the modest $12 admission fee makes for theater going at a true bargain price.